Skip to Main Content

Tests & Measures

Testing and measuring instruments are an important part of research and practice in the fields of nursing, health, psychology, education, and social work. They are used for diagnosing, researching, and assessing. They can be questionnaires, assessments, interviews, surveys, ratings, scales, measurements and tests.

You will need to know how to find out which tests are appropriate for a given situation, where to find out about those tests, and how to find academic research articles that use these tests.

Selected Books

Databases

Journals & Articles

A peer-reviewed journal that specifically addresses instrumentation in nursing. Published three times a year, the journal serves as a prime forum for disseminating information on instruments, tools, approaches, and procedures developed or utilized for measuring variables in nursing research, practice, and education. Particular emphasis is placed on evidence for the reliability, validity, sensitivity, and specificity of such instruments. The journal includes innovative discussions of theories, principles, practices, and issues relevant to nursing measurement.

This article explores measurement in quantitative research and considers the concepts of validity and reliability as they relate to quantitative research measurement. This is the fourth article in an American Journal of Nursing series on clinical research by nurses.

Websites

National Health Care Surveys The National Health Care Surveys are designed to answer key questions of interest to health care policy makers, public health professionals, and researchers.

Rand Health Surveys (Rand Corporation) Open source/freely-available surveys, questionnaires and other instruments/measurement tools from the Rand Corporation.